Good morning Scott,
One thing that stuck out in the Stone Cold/Vince podcast was the brief discussion of Shane. Vince said that Shane leaving was "a mutual decision," which means that, to a certain extent, Vince told his son to leave the company. Even if Shane wanted to stay, Vince wanted him to go. A few questions:
1. I can see why working for Vince would be difficult for Shane, but what happened that made Vince want Shane to go?
2. How bad are things that Shane doesn't even show up for Wrestlemania? Do Shane and Vince still speak? Does Shane come home for holidays?
3. A lot of credit is given to Shane for the shift in style in the Attitude Era. Doesn't that give him a better track record for success than Stephanie?
Enjoy the blog and yadda yadda yadda.
1. The decision was seemingly all on Shane's end, although Shane was in a certain amount of power in the company and didn't appear to have the mind for the business that Vince or even Steph had, so I can see where it would be troublesome to have him around. It was probably best for all concerned that he went and did his own thing, frankly.
2. Shane lives and works in China now (or, as Vince called it, Japan) but he's been photographed with Vince and the family in recent years, so it's not like he's an outcast or anything. He just doesn't want anything to do with WWE as best as anyone can tell.
3. Holding up Steph as a measure of success is setting the bar pretty low considering that she destroyed creative for 10 years and took the company from record profits to whatever it is they are now. But as far as being a wrestling mind, Shane's ideas have been described as like something out of Vince Russo's rejected pile. At least Stephanie appears to have basic understanding of booking, even if she sucks at it.
He had to leave. Sitting in the stands paying fans to shut up was wiping out his trust fund.
ReplyDeleteShane's jerseys were awesome.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Shane is a huge Russo mark as well as someone who seemed to love being on camera. If he'd inherited the company there's a good chance he'd have been just as bad as Dixie Carter.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that a lot of people see Shane as the lost savior of WWE simply because he isn't Stephanie.
ReplyDeleteBut it's pretty fair since arguably it's Stephanie's run with creative that started the shift to the shitter. When you sack Heyman for being "too successful" on Smackdown and making Stephanie's Raw look bad, you're not making the best decision for the company.
"Shane lives and works in China now (or, as Vince called it, Japan)"
ReplyDeleteHead of a multi-million (and at one time, billion) dollar company, ladies and gentleman.
I'm guessng it was Vince who told Lawler to call Taka Chinese instead of Japanese in Royal Rumble 2000 match.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if he can see Russia from his house?
ReplyDeleteI'll be honest...I always loved Shane on tv and in matches.
ReplyDeleteI wish he was around more
"Here comes the MONEEEEY"
and that Shane shuffle
The matches vs. Test, Blackman, Vince at X7
The crazy bumps
Vandaminator on Vince
Obviously the Angle match
The guy was damn good in the ring for an untrained wrestler.
Damn I loved Shane
I specifically remember a ryming promo he cut on the Undertaker back in around 2000
"So Undertaker you better stay in the back,
cuz u don't want none of Shane-o-Mac"
And the Mean Street Posse
Wow great topic, great email. I think Scott really skipped over question 3. Shane really had his finger on what was hip in society and I think his influence on Vince was monumental at the time. Shane finding success then and currently with his China projects leads me to believe he would be a much better fit to run WWE. I would go so far as to say one of the only things that would turn the company around would be Shane taking over for Stephanie / Triple H. Triple H is turning out to be a paranoid megalomaniac and Stephanie is completely aloof. Vince plays the role of the enabler. Shane would be able to create a much better structure and paint a picture of modern day society.
ReplyDeleteI've been averaging 85 dollars/hour since i started freelancing over the internet 6 months ago... My job is to work at home several hours every day and do basic work i get from this company that i found on-line... I am very happy to share this to you... It's an awesome side job to have
ReplyDelete➜➜➜➜➜➜➜➜ WWW.hulujob.Com
Shane was on camera way less than Steph by the time 99 hit and was off tv several years at a time.
ReplyDeleteHow much education do Vince, Triple H, and Stephanie all have. I know Steph has a BA from Boston College in Communications but I'm not sure if Vince even finished high school. I think Triple H went right into wrestling but I stand to be corrected. kind of scary considering the 3 are in charge of a corporation.
ReplyDeleteYou win the day.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, I think I agree with Scott's point on No. 3. He may have been more attuned to the zeitgeist or whatever than Vince (and maybe Steph), but I think because we like Shane as a TV character, we confuse that with being some sort of indication of his mind for the business.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying Shane could book, but I certainly think he would surround himself with people that could, unlike Stephanie and Triple H.
ReplyDeleteI'm agreeing with you. Shane certainly seemed to be heavily involved during the wildly successful days and he has real world experience now, not the WWE-my-way-or-get-out style of things, so he would likely be able to pick better people to run creative.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is Shane took off because he didn't want to fight with Steph/HHH all the time. Can you imagine telling HHH "why don't you stay out of the Punk angle..oh, and don't add Nash to it , either."
It's "kind of scary" to think people are even making a big deal about Vince's slip up.
ReplyDeleteI still remember how hard I cringed the day that Steph took over on-air control of Smackdown and I realized they were trying to push her as some kind of accomplished, authoritative businesswoman. Especially after years of her being the kayfabe Daddies Little Princess and failing spectacularly in the Invasion.
ReplyDeleteShane has something WWE is currently lacking, common sense.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone actually know of what any of Shane's creative ideas were? I've always heard from various places that Shane had a much better mind for the business than Stephanie.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really good point; Shane does seem like he'd subjugate more.
ReplyDeleteThough with HHH and Steph, I think the problem is more too many head chefs in the kitchen and even if they wanted to subjugate some of it- whether to an actual good writing staff or an old-school booker type- there's still old man Vince hanging around, getting into everything.
Did I misuse "subjugate" there? I think it means the opposite of what I was meaning there. Delegate is what I meant.
ReplyDeleteHow much blame does Steph deserve for the decline of the business in general? I'm not saying she doesn't, lord no, I'm just not sure how much. Her ideas and direction needed to be approved by Vince in the end yeah, but you know he was much less critical about it since it was from his little girl (how I love ya! how I love ya!)
ReplyDelete??
ReplyDeleteShane and Vince wrestling competitively against top stars always bothered me. Like, if these guys in suits can just get in the ring and go, what's so special about the regular wrestlers? When Shane is diving off the cage onto Test, how am I supposed to care that Jeff Hardy is diving off the cage? Maybe it's just me.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure Shane is back to living and working in the US, specifically New York/Connecticut.
ReplyDeleteNot just you -- I always hated that, but they did both take big bumps. The main thing I got out of this was something an actual wrestler said that bothered him (can't remember who): RVD can do a Van Terminator on PPV and Jeff Hardy can dive off the top of a cage, but he has to wrestle the next night and 3 more times during the week whereas Shane could rest for the next 3 months. So it really wasn't fair for Shane to do all of those fancy moves.
ReplyDeleteI've heard the same as well, but don't know the exact creative ideas off the top of my head.
ReplyDeleteProof that Shane was better for business: he wanted WWE to buy UFC before Zuffa did, but Vince decided (for the first time in his life?) to not venture out of "sports entertainment." I believe it would have had Shane running UFC so he was already looking for an out and to run his own thing from WWE.
ReplyDeleteI always thought they should have wrestled like Mikey Whipwreck; they get absolutely ZERO offensive moves. If they have to have a match, let another wrestler interfere and get heat.
ReplyDeleteThey at least had the decency to make them overwrought, garbage-y brawls, often with tons of interference. And at least they looked like they could go. I mean, obviously Vince was old even 15 years ago but had the physique and looked like a recently retired wrestling great. And Shane was no small guy either, even if he didn't have Vince's physique.
ReplyDelete"Vince said that Shane leaving was "a mutual decision," which means that, to a certain extent, Vince told his son to leave the company."
ReplyDeleteOr, and try to follow me on this one, it means that Shane chose to leave and Vince doesn't want people to think Shane up and fled the company/family business.
Not everything is so crazy dramatic, guy.
The only insight that I've heard were rumblings that he had awful creative ideas and HHH saying that Shane would always try to build his matches around him jumping/falling off things as a top priority.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if they would have been able to make it successful. The Fertitta brothers were uniquely positioned to get MMA sanctioned again (with one of them being on the Nevada athletic commission), and they went somewhere between $40-50 MILLION in the hole before throwing a Hail Mary by buying time on Spike for The Ultimate Fighter. That was the turnaround for the company being profitable, and I don't think the McMahons would have stuck with it that long.
ReplyDeleteThe only story I've heard about Shane's creative ideas was that he wanted the finish of the Taker/Kane v DDP/Kanyon at Summerslam to end with Taker powerbombing DDP off the top rope and I think DDP went over Shane's head and asked to change the finish because the spot was too dangerous.
ReplyDeleteI think that pretty much sums up Shane's creative mind; because Shane would be willing to take a powerbomb of the top rope and take dangerous bumps, he expects everyone else to do it too.
This. Is there any indication that Vince and Shane have any sort of fractious relationship? Sometimes a mutual decision is just that, especially between a father and son who'd worked together for the son's entire adult life. Just because Shane thought it was best he left and did his own thing, and Vince agreed, it's overly reductive to conclude that "Vince told Shane to leave."
ReplyDeleteYou don't need a college degree to run a company, but it can help.
ReplyDeleteI'm all grown up NOW
ReplyDeleteVince would've found a way to run it into a ground.
ReplyDeleteBut they usually weren't competitive matches. Vince got his ass kicked constantly, and often only won (which he rarely did) through some screwjob.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why people suspect they had a falling out, just a year or two after Shane left; Vince, Shane and Shane's newborn son were in the opening video at that year's WrestleMania doing the "three generations of male McMahon's" photo.
ReplyDeleteIf they had hated each other you'd think it would have still been a fresh wound at that time.
I think Shane, at the very least, would've been a promoter more open to change than the current regime. With his business sense I just can't see Shane being the guy to see running the same show with the same guy on top with the same production and staging for a decade as a good thing they should keep doing.
And Shane was deep into the web side of stuff in the late 90's wasn't he? Wasn't he the guy trying to get decent videos and content up on the web? I can't see how he'd do any worse with The Network.
Like Mike said, just about anyone wouldn't have been able to help it getting run into the ground.
ReplyDeleteThere was a long long period there where the Fertitta's lost a shitload of money trying to make fighting something more than a bloodsport.
I don't know about the exact details, but I heard Shane was a fuck up in every WWE division he worked in.
ReplyDeleteI think with Vince owning UFC there would be additional issues simply because nobody would believe it wasn't fixed now that Vince, who owns the "fake wrestling" company, also owns the "real wrestling" company.
ReplyDeleteI mean, some people assumed the XFL was fixed simply because Vince owned it.
Totally agree. I actually like the Test match, and the X-Pac match is okay since Shane basically wrestles like a non-wrestler, but the rest of Shane's stuff is total shit.
ReplyDeleteThat was always my thinking, of course Shane can do that move, he never has to wrestle again and he'll still be rich. I mean, it's still ballsy as fuck, but letting the owner's son get over on everyone else like that did no one any favors.
ReplyDeleteShane also didn't have to go out and wrestle the next day, allowing him to needlessly and dangerously raise the bar for other guys who did.
ReplyDeleteThat would've been an issue too.
ReplyDeleteI think it was Piper that said on some podcast that basically: "I'm just waiting for, you know, some fighter to take a bribe and go down. Then the whole process of fighting becoming pro wrestling starts over again."
Shane's last "big" angle was that idiotic feud with Kane. Presumably he had some control over that, which doesn't really bode well for his "creative mind."
ReplyDeleteI mostly blame her. It is implied in the Heyman DVD that Heyman was more-or-less fired from Smackdown because his writing team was making Stephanie's writing team look bad. She is the one that instituted the soap opera writers in the first place.
ReplyDeleteWhat a spectacularly stupid decision. I get that she is Vince's daughter, but she had absolutely zero experience as an entertainment writer and was put in charge of writing the company's flagship program.
Vince has a degree in something-or-other from East Carolina.
ReplyDeleteIt's already happened, and the sport is fine. Mark Coleman had a fight in PRIDE that he refers to as his "mortgage fight." I forget who his opponent was, but you hear Bas kind of stunned and not know what to say when Coleman obviously lets the guy do a reversal on the ground and win the fight.
ReplyDeleteJumper cables to, as JR said, "the gonads"?
ReplyDeleteFucking terrible.
But that storyline had so many different layers that really spoke to me as a fan. For instance when Kane shocked Shane's balls, that's exactly how I felt watching the show.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Shane also come back for the feud with DX version 2, or did I imagine that?
ReplyDeleteWhen HHH and Shawn first reformed in 2006? Yes, he did. Not another time after that, as far as I know.
ReplyDeleteEh, I actually quite liked that feud.
ReplyDeleteThere's no chance Vince sinks his money into something and lets someone else run it themselves, even his son.
ReplyDeleteI think it's mostly her trying to attract the female demographic. A demographic that WWE hasn't had a good history of attracting in the first place. I always felt WWE should do more to attract the black/hispanic demos.
ReplyDeleteIt's a valid point, but just because he has that luxury doesn't automatically mean he has the actual ability to do it. It might take away something from the everyday workers in the eyes of some fans, but I guess I never saw it that way. I always just saw it as being impressive as fuck that Shane could bust out some of that stuff and take some of those bumps.
ReplyDeleteI thought WCW was originally going to be Shane's baby when Vince first brought it and thought they could run it as a separate company.
ReplyDeleteHe feuded with Orton in 2009? Or 2008.
ReplyDeleteOh I loved me some Shane matches too, that damn dance of his was one of the best heat machines of all time.
ReplyDeleteI can just see how some wrestlers would be very pissed about that sort of stuff. Especially when it got to the point where he was landing on crash pads with minimal chance of injury, any of the boys could've done that stuff.
The feud best known for that botched punt where Orton missed by a mile, but Shane sold it anyway.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I think WWE's constant stream of dancing black guys is the company's attempt to attract blacks.
ReplyDeleteThey've definitely attempted to reach the Hispanic demo by hiring guys like Mysterio, Del Rio, and Sin Cara, but obviously only Mysterio has really worked out for them in that regard.
Why Stephanie is so adamant about getting female viewers is beyond me. It's hard enough to get new adult males to watch pro wrestling, so going for adult females is borderline insane.
I don't think that was ever the intention, I think we mostly created that idea on forums and stuff.
ReplyDeleteThe way WCW's business was going, I'd bet the farm Vince bought it wit the full intention of killing it dead. Sort of the same as the conspiracy as to why he brought ECW back.
Yep. Don't get me wrong, I see the validity in all of these points and mostly agree. My point is just that as a viewer it didn't detract from anything for me.
ReplyDeleteThe Vince/Shane match at WMX7 is great, too. Otherwise, I mostly agree. There's probably another match or two somewhere in there that was OK (I enjoyed the McMahon/Spirit Squad/DX stuff in 2006, since it was mostly silly comedy stuff) but for the most part those are the only three I'd say are, y'know, "good."
ReplyDeleteShane didn't leave the wwe until or right before Linda announced that she was running for office. Not before wrestlmania 20, that was at least 5 years before he left.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I always hated that spot. A full-on kick would be really hard to pull and be really dangerous, and when it connected it was super obvious he was pulling up on it, as he should, because it's otherwise a guaranteed concussion. But that's why he, I don't know...maybe shouldn't have done that spot.
ReplyDeleteThe worst was Bischoff bloodying up Ric Flair at Starrcade 1998.
ReplyDeleteBischoff knows kung fu.
ReplyDeleteSome blamed him fir losing the wwf initials, but I don't believe that
ReplyDeleteShane had a decent TV presence and sold his angles well enough. But from everything I've read he was content to let StepHHH run it and go do his own thing
ReplyDeleteShane's a whale http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2014/03/tumblr_n1rtu0N50a1rrnt9go2_4001.gif
ReplyDeleteThat's gotta be post-Stunner, lol
ReplyDeleteShane also throws the worst punches in the business http://www.heartless-angel.com/Bodybuilding/ShaneMcMahonRaw2.gif
ReplyDeleteCorrect http://i.imgur.com/fzTItAa.gif
ReplyDeleteI think Scott mentioned it in one of his books that they were going to revive WCW, and that there were dates already set in place. The Booker T/Buff match more or less derailed that idea, hence we got the Brand Extension
ReplyDeleteWWF failing to find WCW another network also derailed those plans too.
ReplyDeleteMan, say what you want about Shane (and we did in this thread) but goddamn could that guy sell like a natural.
ReplyDeleteSay this about him at least. He'd kill himself to get the big match over
ReplyDeletestrangely enough, I can easily imagine UFC being "too close to wrestling" for Vince to be interested in it (as opposed to a restaurant, movies or a football league)
ReplyDeletethat's why I kind of dislike the Kurt/Shane match from King of the Ring. yes, it's an amazing carwreck. but Shane was never even presented as a "real wrestler". he really, really [...] he shouldn't have been able to get up after taking some of the bumps that he took.
ReplyDeleteSmarks do love their conspiracy theories.
ReplyDeleteNot a chance. That was what some random assholes like us thought/wanted to believe, but that's not a Vince move.
ReplyDeleteI still don't understand how they screwed Sin Cara up. I mean, I do, but I don't understand how anyone can be that stupid. Mistico was HUGE in Mexico, making money for promoters hand over fist, and they had him change everything that made him successful along with making his wrestle an extremely slow style that lead to him botching everything. Why even sign the guy in the first place?
ReplyDeleteVince had just moved to TNN and had an exclusive deal with Viacom, but he thought he could put WCW on a non Viacom network. That obviously didn't fly. What grapefruits.
ReplyDeleteThe real reason Shane left was because Vince started calling HHH 'son' and he never refers to Shane as 'son', just 'Shane'. Hurt his feelings big time. Over in Japan they call him Shane-san so everyone wins
ReplyDeleteShane seems a helluva lot more likable than Steph could ever think of being, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteShe appears to be badly implementing the already bad ideas that Vince has.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually covered in an interview Shane had with Buzzfeed (of all places) before Wrestlemania.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.buzzfeed.com/golianopoulos/how-pro-wrestlings-scion-is-fighting-to-make-it-on-his-own
Sorry but this has to be one of the smartest comments in BoD history. If I don't have at least 5 upvotes when I return I'll be very disappointed
ReplyDeleteSo you're saying she has the opposite effect of the whole McMahon/Russo relationship, where McMahon filtered out Russo's bad ideas, and now Stephanie filters out her dad's good ideas.
ReplyDeletecultstatus has assured me in the past that Shane is bitter about Steph/HHH being given the company instead of him and was forced out etc... therefore that is what happened. He even wanted shane to be the one to buy out TNA FFS.
ReplyDeleteSteph and Shane both went to Boston University.
ReplyDeleteShane and Linda seem to be the more down to earth ones on the McMahon side of the family.
ReplyDeleteDown vote.
ReplyDeleteI down voted you too. Or did I? That's the thing with down votes - you never know for sure!
ReplyDeleteI didn't actually down vote you, Breezy. Just said it. Way to be a jerk.
ReplyDeleteWell now you're just playing mind games
ReplyDeleteI've heard that too many cooks can spoil the broth.
ReplyDeleteThe screwed up Ultimo Dragon's run too ten years earlier.
ReplyDeleteYour ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
ReplyDeleteShane is one of three guys that would get the earth-shattering pop if they ever returned, the other two being Punk & Angle.
ReplyDeleteI think it's pretty much what it sounds like. Allegedly, WWE tried to get TV time for WCW when they first acquired it and were going to give him a chance to wield a considerable amount of influence over the product.
And then I think it was RVD or Heyman who said that there was a plan in place for Shane to relaunch and run ECW as an internet exclusive show off WWE.com. That morphed into the abortion that became the ECW relaunch on Sci-Fi.
It probably became clear to the guy that he was never going to get a chance to do his own thing in the business and he jumped at another opportunity. The combination of lack of freedom to explore his own ideas and Vince being one of the worst people in the world to work for in any capacity (according to anyone who's ever worked for WWE in a corporate capacity and given an interview) probably made him tap out.
Character-wise, I always thought he was more promising as successor to Vince on TV than Stephanie was. Still kind of do.
She's demonized more than she should be. At the end of the day, it's pretty much all Vince's vision. The booking is 100% Vince.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I could tangibly say she deserves blame for from wrestling fans is that she seems to be the one who pushed to fill her writing staffs with Hollywood rejects as opposed to guys who have a little better feel for wrestling as a genre.
I envision a writing room back then where Ex-Moesha staff writer pitches something and then Ex-Silk Stalkings writer pitches something and then Heyman gets his turn and looks at these people and says in disbelief "are you fucking retarded" and then rants about how awful their ideas are and then lays out a perfect idea for the situation.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's probably the crux of it. It's that Heyman probably so thinly veiled his contempt for everyone in that room, including Stephanie, that they just wanted no part of him.
That, and he spied on conference calls. Allegedly.
Shane McMahon doesn't live in China. He lives in Tribeca.
ReplyDeleteThat video was done at Wrestlemania XX. Shane was very much still in the company
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Shane v. Angle really doesn't hold up.
ReplyDeleteSo he's not currently sleeping with Joanie Laurer?
ReplyDeleteSo you're saying Heyman should be directing the WWE and Stephanie should be directing fans....to their seats?
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome rofl!
ReplyDeleteBest Shane match?
ReplyDeleteI know the Angle murder session gets a lot of love, but I voye for the WM17 one with Vince, if only because its two non-wrestlers pulling off a miracle
Shane was generally considered to have a very poor business acumen when he worked for WWE.
ReplyDeleteI see no evidence that Shane would be the one to turn the company around or create a better business structure.
Tomato, to-mah-to...
ReplyDeleteas a character, the ruthless capitalist thing never really suited Shane. I like him as a laid-back "cool trust-fund baby" type. Sort of like a young version of Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack
ReplyDeleteYou've seen Linda campaign right?
ReplyDelete